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Comparative CPU Benchmarks From 1995 to 2004

Posted by timothy on from the difference-engine dept.

Lux writes "The guys over at Tom's Hardware Guide have been busy recently! They've compared over a hundred different architectures dating all the way back to the Pentium 1 in one huge benchmarking effort. Looking to upgrade an older system? Unlike most benchmarks, which compare modern systems to other modern systems, these charts can help you figure out if the cost of upgrading is worth the speedup or if you should hold off for a bit longer."

7 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Upgrade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I currently have a 486 with an (upgraded) 900MB hard drive, cdrom drive, and a whopping 32MB of ram. And windows 3.1 + dos. What are my upgrade options?

  2. Heat Output by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's easy...if the room is getting a little too chilly for my liking, I upgrade to a faster processor. Problem solved.

  3. Benchmarks, shmenchmarks by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Artificial benchmarks tend to exaggerate minor differences in speed that aren't noticable or relevant in human time.

    The best analysis of whether you should upgrade is a subjective one. Sit down at the computer. Does it do what you want or not?

    Benchmarks tell me my Radeon 9800 is horribly out of date and imply its too weak to play any modern games. But I know from experience, that's bullshit.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  4. Well by 0racle · · Score: 5, Funny

    I went from a 486 to a Sempron 2500+. Unfortunatly the artical doesn't go back far enough so I can't tell if it was worth it.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  5. 100 architectures?! by Jhan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, they only benchmark one architecture, x86. A real shame, I would love to see a thorough comparison of *multiple* processor architectures over a long period of time.

    --

    I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

  6. The title of this newspiece is misleading! by chaoskitty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Comparative CPU Benchmarks From 1995 to 2004"

    I only see x86 CPUs. What about the PowerPCs, SPARCs, MIPS, Alphas, ARMs, and so on?

    For instance, the m68060 was the first consumer level processor with branch prediction and branch folding, superscalar dispatch, and real-world throughput of more than one instruction per clock cycle. Except for floating point where it performed only modestly, the m68060 seriously outperformed the Pentium in spite of only having a 32 bit data bus as compared with the Pentium's 64 bit bus. Isn't this significant in illustrating the influences in processor architecture?

    http://www.sixgirls.org/ is an m68060 Amiga running NetBSD 2.0. Still very useful after all this time. Where are all those Pentium 60 machines?

  7. Exciting? by SpinningAround · · Score: 5, Informative
    As I recall, they claimed that part one of the article took something like 300 hours to put together. Seems like a lot of work to tell me that processors have become a lot faster in the last 10 years.


    Actually I shouldn't give Tom's Hardware a hard time (like everyone else seems to). As articles go, the reviews of high-end ink-jets, the 8-channel RAID6 card and the Viewsonic media center were quite interesting (and a lot more recent than the CPU round-up too).


    These days though, my favourite reviewer is Dan (who posts here now and then). Dan seems to understand that a million graphs showing you the statistically insignificant difference between the latest mobos / graphic cards / processors / ram sinks don't really make a great site.